I have a ton of street level and some elevated shots of the district right before h&r block started. I need to go take after shots...I tried to stand on things like manholes thinking they wouldn't move.

grecobs wrote:Incredible progress in a decade but still a lot of work to do. The new Lights will help fill in but I wonder when the other lots will be developed.

Are any of them for sale?

I’m convinced Copaken is sitting on that prime lot at 13th and Grand and have no serious intentions to build. After the lights are done, that will be one of the last surface lots in the PNL district.

Unless they’re holding out for a future baseball stadium, I’d like to see it developed.

they are holding out on a very large employer suddenly wanting a massive office tower that won't be ready for 3-5 years after they decide to move downtown.
Essentially Copaken is waiting for a large tenant before they build. And large tenants are looking for space that is essentially moving in ready.

Last edited by normalthings on Wed Apr 18, 2018 3:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Honestly, there's not much that Copaken can do with that site right now. High-rise residential and hotel projects aren't viable when the city is giving substantial cash subsidies to competing projects nearby, and the office market is tepid at best. With a premium site like that it's better to wait for the right moment than to build something small and cheap just for the sake of it. An excess of good development sites can be a good problem to have.

IMO the best thing that could happen would be for Cordish to first build its second office building and then 13th and Grand gets built afterwards. The Cordish building is limited in size by the existing foundation, while the Copaken site has unlimited potential. If the Cordish building is successful then it would provide empirical evidence about the demand for new Class A space in the CBD which would allow Copaken to build something as ambitious as possible. (I'm also assuming that the Cordish building would be cheaper since its foundation is already built, and if I'm not mistaken it would not require the construction of any new parking. Lower costs = lower risk/lower target rents = less time spent waiting for the office market to improve.)

kas1 wrote:Honestly, there's not much that Copaken can do with that site right now. High-rise residential and hotel projects aren't viable when the city is giving substantial cash subsidies to competing projects nearby, and the office market is tepid at best. With a premium site like that it's better to wait for the right moment than to build something small and cheap just for the sake of it. An excess of good development sites can be a good problem to have.

IMO the best thing that could happen would be for Cordish to first build its second office building and then 13th and Grand gets built afterward. The Cordish building is limited in size by the existing foundation, while the Copaken site has unlimited potential. If the Cordish building is successful then it would provide empirical evidence about the demand for new Class A space in the CBD which would allow Copaken to build something as ambitious as possible. (I'm also assuming that the Cordish building would be cheaper since its foundation is already built, and if I'm not mistaken it would not require the construction of any new parking. Lower costs = lower risk/lower target rents = less time spent waiting for the office market to improve.)

An excess of good development sites is a bad problem. If your area is in high demand, you should have only bad or none at all development sites left.

I think that someone is going to have to pull the trigger on some sort of spec. office tower. Copaken is not really a company that builds ambitious things. They have sat on like 5+ ambitious downtown projects for like the past 30 years. The only thing that they will ever build is a scaled back and rather disappointing structure. This is why everyone here is clamoring for them to just get it over with. At least they could build a mixed-use block with retail, condos/apartments, hotel, and parking and then pour the pillars for a "signature" office tower" to be built in the future

You can't wait forever for some pie-in-the-sky mega-project. Look at the North Loop. There is no big payoff coming. Just build smaller infill projects that create activity. It's the appearance of vacancy and no activity that are the reason big tenants don't come. Create a filled-in neighborhood with street life and that attracts them.

Waiting for one big tenant can also be risky because that tenant can also empty a majority of your building at the end of the lease, and you can be left with no replacement tenant.

Instead of 30-stories of office space, why not just build a mixed-use tower with one floor of retail, five floors of office, and five floors of residential? It's easier to find smaller office tenants than large ones.

If a big employer wants to come downtown, there are plenty of other cleared parcels in greater downtown that can be developed.

They did Corrigan Station on spec, and Arterra is the only non-wood frame residential project downtown that wasn't massively subsidized (Cordish) or based on pie-in-the-sky cost estimates (2nd and Delaware). Sure they didn't built anything downtown for 30 years, but no one else did either. The only real difference between them and others is that they put renders of dream projects on their website rather than just quietly sitting on their land like everyone else.

"If your area is in high demand ..."

It's not, though. That's why Cordish is taking its sweet time building out each of its development sites and why the only other project to happen on a neighboring parcel (P&L building) was primarily a renovation with only a minimum amount of new construction. The same company owns the other vacant part of that block and hasn't announced anything for it. The block south of that one sits around collecting dust. The southeast corner of Truman & Main has been on the market with nothing happening. The southwest corner is getting a shiny new surface parking lot. This isn't just a Copaken thing.

FangKC wrote:You can't wait forever for some pie-in-the-sky mega-project. Look at the North Loop. There is no big payoff coming. Just build smaller infill projects that create activity. It's the appearance of vacancy and no activity that are the reason big tenants don't come. Create a filled-in neighborhood with street life and that attracts them.

13th and Grand has little in common with the North Loop. The surrounding blocks are pretty much all built out. A project there won't be a catalyst for anything.

There are already smaller infill projects taking place all over downtown filling in neighborhoods and creating activity. The simple truth of the matter is that there are a lot more available development sites than what the market actually needs in the short run. Better to use the fringe sites for the smaller development than to use premium sites. As office absorption continues to rebound and tick upward there will eventually be demand for substantial new buildings, and people will be kicking themselves if the sites in the heart of the CBD were already used up with mid-rise residential filler.

The best of both worlds would be for Copaken to do its project with the Jenkins Music façade and also build an equally slender building next to it and another one on the opposite face of the garage. That would do wonders for removing blight and adding some activity to the block, especially with some micro retail spaces at the bottom.

kas1 wrote:"Copaken is not really a company that builds ambitious things."

They did Corrigan Station on spec, and Arterra is the only non-wood frame residential project downtown that wasn't massively subsidized (Cordish) or based on pie-in-the-sky cost estimates (2nd and Delaware). Sure they didn't built anything downtown for 30 years, but no one else did either. The only real difference between them and others is that they put renders of dream projects on their website rather than just quietly sitting on their land like everyone else.

"If your area is in high demand ..."

It's not, though. That's why Cordish is taking its sweet time building out each of its development sites and why the only other project to happen on a neighboring parcel (P&L building) was primarily a renovation with only a minimum amount of new construction. The same company owns the other vacant part of that block and hasn't announced anything for it. The block south of that one sits around collecting dust. The southeast corner of Truman & Main has been on the market with nothing happening. The southwest corner is getting a shiny new surface parking lot. This isn't just a Copaken thing.

1. I would generally say that Copaken sits on lots for extended periods of times while pedaling projects that will likely never happen. May as well build small or sell off.

2. Having lots of opens development sites isn’t a good thing like an above commenter tried to say.

I note that neither you nor anyone else on the board complains that Cordish will take some 10-15 years to build out all of its development sites with premium high-rises. If the goal were to get rid of development sites as quickly as possible then clearly it would have been better for them to have built out all four of the sites simultaneously with smaller buildings. But I think that everyone here understands that high density is the attraction of the area and that it's worth taking the extra time to do things right. It just seems silly to me that this logic goes out the window as soon as people look across the street.

I also note that when Copaken proposed a ten story building for that site people here complained that it wasn't big enough. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. A small building isn't right for that site and the market isn't there for a big one.

kas1 wrote:I note that neither you nor anyone else on the board complains that Cordish will take some 10-15 years to build out all of its development sites with premium high-rises. If the goal were to get rid of development sites as quickly as possible then clearly it would have been better for them to have built out all four of the sites simultaneously with smaller buildings. But I think that everyone here understands that high density is the attraction of the area and that it's worth taking the extra time to do things right. It just seems silly to me that this logic goes out the window as soon as people look across the street.

I also note that when Copaken proposed a ten story building for that site people here complained that it wasn't big enough. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. A small building isn't right for that site and the market isn't there for a big one.

I think the difference between Cordish and Copaken is thag we know that Cordish is actively building and trying to build in KC. While I can’t say Copaken isn’t actively planning something, It seems like for the most part Copaken has been sitting on a bunch of prime spots for decades.

Cordish waited whag like a decade to begin building the residential towers? Yet some of Copakens planned projects have been around for over 20 years.

I think that people are frustrated that Copaken sat on the plans for a nice tower on that site for many years(we waited for goodness) then put out a rendering of an ugly and short building. Really, they could build a nice mixed use development on part of the block leaving some for a big office tower. Or build out most of the block with piers to build upwards.

Copaken is literally building office and residential space downtown as we speak. Again, there isn't enough demand to build out every downtown development site simultaneously. It makes sense for them to build a residential project in a neighborhood that hasn't seen new construction rather than competing head-to-head with projects that each receive an eight-figure cash subsidy. And it makes sense to test out the office market with a smaller project that doesn't waste a premium development site. This is why having a lot of development sites is a good problem to have. So that you can build something today and still have something to build tomorrow. Filling out all of the CBD with residential projects would be really dumb when the end goal is to bring jobs back downtown again. If Copaken wants to sit on that site until the office market comes back then that's perfectly fine. It's not holding back anything else.

Also, Copaken doesn't own that entire block, and until just recently they owned even less of it than they do now, so what you propose isn't really feasible in the first place.

FangKC wrote:You can't wait forever for some pie-in-the-sky mega-project. Look at the North Loop. There is no big payoff coming. Just build smaller infill projects that create activity. It's the appearance of vacancy and no activity that are the reason big tenants don't come. Create a filled-in neighborhood with street life and that attracts them.

13th and Grand has little in common with the North Loop. The surrounding blocks are pretty much all built out. A project there won't be a catalyst for anything.

There are already smaller infill projects taking place all over downtown filling in neighborhoods and creating activity. The simple truth of the matter is that there are a lot more available development sites than what the market actually needs in the short run. Better to use the fringe sites for the smaller development than to use premium sites. As office absorption continues to rebound and tick upward there will eventually be demand for substantial new buildings, and people will be kicking themselves if the sites in the heart of the CBD were already used up with mid-rise residential filler.

The best of both worlds would be for Copaken to do its project with the Jenkins Music façade and also build an equally slender building next to it and another one on the opposite face of the garage. That would do wonders for removing blight and adding some activity to the block, especially with some micro retail spaces at the bottom.

Everything you have said above is overly optimistic. 13th and Grand is not a premium site where companies are salivating to be. The truth of the matter is that most large employers would rather locate around Crown Center, or on the Plaza; maybe Three Trails/Oxford on the Blue in KCMO; or near College Avenue in Overland Park.

The 1034 Main site has been being pimped out for as long as I've been in Kansas City (since 2002). I'm sure sales people have pitched it as a "premium" location all those years as well. I'm sure they already have building plans ready to go.

It is as likely that a North Loop parcel will get developed before 13th and Grand. It depends on what another developer/tenant wants to accomplish. I didn't expect the Residence Inn at 16th and Baltimore would go up at that site before anything at 13th and Grand, but it did.

If Copaken wants to sit on that site until the office market comes back then that's perfectly fine. It's not holding back anything else.

Keep in mind, that the Kempers started their redevelopment schemes in the North Loop in the 1950s, and there are still vacant lots. So maybe had they built more housing, downtown wouldn't have gone downhill so fast and for so long. Sometimes it is better to build something instead of waiting forever and doing nothing. It's not like there aren't other areas to build office buildings. Paseo West and East Crossroads are full of potential sites to slowly expand downtown, or even along Truman Road eastward towards Prospect.